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Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

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Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#671

Post by pythonguython »

arethuza wrote: post #665
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

Apologies for the rampant paranoia but that all sounds great - but how do I know that advice like this can be trusted, after all you could be an agent of a state security service directing people towards services they want people to use. NB Just to be clear, I'm not doubting you, but if I was in a situation where my life or liberty was at threat I would be very worried about whose advice to take.

He’s giving advice about generic protocols - you could learn about them and make your own decision. The tools he mentioned are open source - you could read the source code or trust in the community. I don’t know what other guarantee you could hope to get. If he told you he’s an anti digital censorship expert he could just be lying to you. Anyone COULD be an agent, but at a certain point you have to choose to trust people, at some potential risk to yourself.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#672

Post by cheeseomlit »

youainti wrote: post #493
nine_k wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More dangerous though. You'd need something like truecrypt, too.

btw, veracrypt is the name if the follow up project. truecrypt shut down over a decade ago rather abruptly, so anything labeled truecrypt today is suspect as either out of date or potential malware.

Wasn't the conspiracy theory that truecrypt got shut down because it was 'too effective', and the successor projects presumably have intentional backdoors or something?

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#673

Post by bdd8f1df777b »

arethuza wrote: post #665
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

Apologies for the rampant paranoia but that all sounds great - but how do I know that advice like this can be trusted, after all you could be an agent of a state security service directing people towards services they want people to use. NB Just to be clear, I'm not doubting you, but if I was in a situation where my life or liberty was at threat I would be very worried about whose advice to take.

If you have the technical knowledge, you can just read the protocols, find out if they make sense, and then implement them yourself. Most of them are quite straight forward so it's not possible to hide a backdoor like Dual_EC_DRBG in the protocol.

If you are not so technical then you have to decide who to trust. For example, you may trust that open source software has been vetted enough and build one from source. Or trust that the built artefacts downloaded from github is good enough. Or trust that the software downloaded from a website not marked as fraud by Google Chrome is good enough. Etc.

In any case, the more technical knowledge you have, the more confidence you can have by doing due diligence yourself.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#674

Post by refulgentis »

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #256
refulgentis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Kafka, suspicion is healthy. However, abstraction provides no way forward when faced with practicalities instead of theory. Creates a Kafka-esque situation - anything suitable is by definition unsuitable. Better to focus on practical technical advice.

I don't see parent abstracting. They are simply pointing out a very real risk, which you don't provide any counter points to. Instead you seem to dismiss their point based on a strawman

Sir: you have written my comment better than I ever could.

Thank you, - Refulgentis

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#675

Post by dwood_dev »

tarruda wrote: post #610
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

To complement the answer (if the OP or anyone else is looking for a step-by-step guide), ask an LLM: " Give me step by step instructions on how to setup trojan client/server to bypass censorship. Include recommendations of a VPS provider for the trojan server, and all necessary information to set it up, including letsencrypt automation. Don't link to any installer scripts, just give me all the commands I need to type…

ChatGPT happily helped me run through all kinds of tools and configs. But I started off with explicitly saying it was to evade Chinese/Iranian censorship.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#677

Post by usefulcat »

tarruda wrote: post #610
bdd8f1df777b wrote: post #584

If you need to bypass censorship, you'll need a tool specifically designed for anti-censorship, rather than any one repurposed for that. Since China has the most advanced network censorship, the Chinese have also invented the most advanced anti-censorship tools. The first generation is shadowsocks. It basically encrypts the traffic from the beginning without any handshakes, so DPI cannot find out its nature. This is…

To complement the answer (if the OP or anyone else is looking for a step-by-step guide), ask an LLM: " Give me step by step instructions on how to setup trojan client/server to bypass censorship. Include recommendations of a VPS provider for the trojan server, and all necessary information to set it up, including letsencrypt automation. Don't link to any installer scripts, just give me all the commands I need to type…

Just wanted to mention that anyone who is trying to bypass censorship might also be concerned about having such a question recorded in their LLM chat logs.

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#678

Post by [deleted] »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #499
infamouscow wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's Founders saw civil rights as inherent in the Constitution's framework, rooted in natural law. They added the Bill of Rights as an explicit bulwark. That's why we have the 1st Amendment's free speech, and if that falls, the 2nd Amendment ensures we have guns.

How's that working for you at the moment? Sorry for the snide comment, but considering the last 6 - 8 months in the US, at least from what is being reported in the outside world, the 1st amendment doesn't seem to be providing much in the way of protection, and unless I'm missing something the general public doesn't seem to have the level of interest that would be required for your 2nd amendment to play out in any mea…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

#680

Post by dpb001 »

pembrook wrote: post #633
nosianu wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s working fantastic. The ignorance of what's been happening the last few months is ridiculous. Trump and his people have successfully pressured, or denied access, or removed security clearances, or demonetized (public broadcasting), or directly fired, or just called out to cause a hate-storm from his supporters, companies, organizations, individuals. Oh sure, it is different from the UK: Instead of technical blo…

[flagged]

I think John Bolton would disagree with you.
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